18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition 283 sales or to obtain orders or contracts for services. Id. at *12. However, the Court determined that the applicability of the outside sales exemption was not ascertainable from the face of the complaint. Although Plaintiff alleged in her complaint that some of her duties included “stand[ing] on the street and try[ing] to convince individual students to take classes at MLI,” other duties included making appointments to meet with students who were interested in taking courses, creating physical and electronic files for prospective students based on the information they provided to her, transmitting those files to the FAFSA office, and continuing to interact with students until they commenced at Defendant. Id. Since the complaint did not break down the time spent on each of the job duties, the Court concluded that it did not contain sufficient facts to ascertain Plaintiff’s primary duty or whether she was customarily and regularly engaged away from Defendant’s place of business. Id . at *13. As such, the Court determined that Defendant could not meet its burden of establishing the applicability of the outside sales exemption. In addition, the Court ruled that Plaintiff’s overtime claim under the FLSA, and taken as true, provided sufficient detail about the length and frequency of her unpaid work to state an FLSA overtime claim. Accordingly, the Court denied Defendant’s motion to dismiss the FLSA overtime claim. The Court also denied Defendant’s motion to dismiss the NYLL overtime violations claim for the same reasons. Finally, the Court ruled that Plaintiff also sufficiently pled her wage statement claim and waiting time claims under the NYLL such that dismissal should be denied. For these reasons, the Court denied Defendant’s motion in its entirety. Mabe, et al. v. Wal-Mart Associates , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50954 (N.D.N.Y. March 18, 2021) . Plaintiff, an hourly cashier, filed a class action alleging that Defendant failed to timely wages and failed to provide accurate wage statements in violation of the New York Labor Law (“NYLL”). Defendant filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), which the Court denied. Plaintiff asserted that Defendant violated the NYLL by paying her wages on a bi-weekly (rather than weekly) basis, and by furnishing wage statements containing the total hours worked for each pay period (rather than on a weekly basis). Id . at *2. Section 191(1)(a)(i) of the NYLL provides that "a manual worker shall be paid weekly and not later than seven calendar days after the end of the week in which the wages are earned." Id . at *3. Defendant did not dispute that Plaintiff was a manual worker. However, it argued that Plaintiff failed to allege that she was not paid for all work performed. Defendant contended that the under § 198, recovery of damages was only permitted for a successful claim of unpaid wages, and not wages that are untimely paid. The Court rejected Defendant’s argument. The Court noted that contrary to Defendant’s argument that § 198 provided remedies only in the event of non-payment or partial payment of wages, the plain language of the statute indicates that individuals may bring suit for any "wage claim" against an employer. Id . at *10-11. Accordingly, the Court denied Defendant’s motion to dismiss as to the timely payment of wages claim. Defendant also asserted that Plaintiff’s second cause of action was meritless because § 195(3) of the NYLL requires only that wage statements be furnished with every payment of wages and contain certain specific information, and its wage statements met the necessary requirement. The Court agreed that Defendant’s wage statement contained all of the information required by § 195(3). The Court agreed with Defendant that § 195(3) did not require that wage statements be furnished on a weekly basis or provide a breakdown of how many hours an employee works "per week." Id . at *20. Accordingly, the Court granted Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s wage statement claim. Texas Hill Country Landscaping, Inc., et al. v. Caterpillar, Inc., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37097 (N.D. Ill. March 1, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of purchasers and lessors of C-18 and C-32 engines manufactured and sold by Defendant, filed a class action alleging that the engines were defective, which caused oil and coolant mixing that ultimately leading to engine failure. Defendant filed a Rule 12(f) motion to strike the class allegations from the complaint, which the Court denied. Plaintiffs sought certification of two nationwide classes comprised of all purchasers or lessors of Caterpillar engines equipped with the allegedly defective cylinder liners, including: (i) a declaratory and injunctive relief class; and (ii) a nationwide damages class. Plaintiffs contended that the substantive law of Illinois would govern the claims of all class members, but if further choice-of-law analysis pointed to laws of more states, Plaintiffs proposed certifying state-specific subclasses. Defendant contended that the complaint’s class action allegations were "facially defective," because the proposed classes could not survive a Rule 23 analysis. Plaintiffs argued that it was premature to conduct a Rule 23 and a choice-of-law analysis at the pleading stage. In considering the motion, the Court explained that Rule 12(f) allowed it to strike "any insufficient defense or any scandalous, impertinent, or irrelevant matter" from a pleading. Id . at *14. However, the Court noted that the Rule 23 allows similar relief relating to striking class allegations from a complaint. The Court therefore examined the motion under the Rule 23 standard. The Court explained that it